Thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) are important items of commerce, being useful as molding resins, for films, and for coatings. The most common method of forming films from thermoplastics is extrusion of the polymer through a film die. When this is done with LCPs, the polymer usually is highly oriented in the machine (extrusion) direction (MD), and is quite weak and brittle in the transverse direction (TD). Special methods have been developed to produce LCP films (or thin tubes which can be slit into films) with more balanced MD/TD properties, thus improving the TD properties of the film. However, such methods, which for instance are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,384,016, 4,820,466, 4,963,428, 4,966,807, 5,156,785, 5,248,305,288,529, 5,312,238, and 5,326,245 and G. W. Farrell, et al., Journal of Polymer Engineering, vol. 6, p. 263-289 (1986), usually require the use of intricate, expensive equipment which may be difficult to operate reliably, produce tubes which may not lay flat as films, and/or require labor intensive lay-up methods. One of these methods is moving in the TD an extrusion die surface which contacts the molten LCP. Thus better methods of preparing improved LCP films are needed.